Filming got under way in Kigali on Saturday for the latest feature film on the Rwandan genocide, Shooting Dogs, which portrays the United Nations as having betrayed the Rwandan people in 1994.
The film, funded mainly by BBC Films and set to be released in cinemas next year, has been a year in development and pre-production in Rwanda has been going on for the past two months.
”It’s been an intensive and hugely rewarding experience — now we just want to get going,” said producer David Belton before the start of filming on Saturday.
Shooting Dogs stars John Hurt and is directed by Michael Caton-Jones.
Most of the filming is being done at Ecole technique officielle (ETO), a technical high school in Kigali where more than 2 000 people took refuge in the first days of the genocide.
Four days into the mayhem, once the handful of foreigners present had been evacuated from the site, United Nations troops were ordered to leave it and abandon the Rwandans who had sought protection there.
Once the UN troops left the majority of the Rwandans were killed by militia.
The film’s title is an ironic reference to the refusal of the UN peacekeepers deployed in Rwanda to use force against the militia who carried out the genocide while they were willing to shoot the dogs that were eating the corpses littered across the capital.
Two other feature films on the Rwandan genocide have so far been made this year. Haitian director, Raoul Peck, finished shooting Sometimes in April in Rwanda earlier this year and in South Africa, Terry George of Ireland, filmed Hotel Rwanda, based on the true story of a hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina who saved the lives of several hundred people during the genocide.
After Shooting Dogs — filming is scheduled to be completed in the second half of September –, Canada’s Lyla Films will make an adaptation of the Gil Courtemanche novel A Sunday at the pool in Kigali.
The first ever feature film on the Rwandan genocide was the very low budget 100 Days, made in 2002 and filmed in the western lakeside town of Kibuye. – Sapa-AFP